The newly announced Samsung HW-F750 is dubbed the “world’s first sound bar with a vacuum tube amp”, which is technically true: like last year’s models, it has a tube preamplifier paired with a digital amplifier. In any event, the difference is largely academic, as I didn’t find that the DA-E750’s tubes added a distinctively analog sound, although it was a good-sounding tabletop system.

Samsung also touts an array of sound processing features, including virtual surround sound, 3D Sound Plus and a gyroscopic sensor. 3D Sound Plus supposedly “calculates the depth of onscreen 3D images and configures the system’s depth of sound accordingly”. I wouldn’t put too much stock in that gimmicky-sounding feature, especially from a system that lacks true surround capabilities. The built-in gyroscope senses the exact positioning of the sound bar and adjusts to optimize sound quality.

The HW-F750 is scheduled to be released in the first half of 2013. No pricing has been announced yet.